


The Fire in Your Blood

by stardropdream



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Multi, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 19:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5678512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Whatever I can do,” Aramis tells them both, looking between the two of them.  “Whatever it is you need, I’ll give it to you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fire in Your Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songdances](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songdances/gifts).



> This is a birthday present for the lovely Ana! Happy birthday! ♥   
> This is such shameless self-indulgence and only a fraction of what I wanted to be able to give to her... but oh well. Divided into three sections, each one told from a different POV. Enjoy :> ♥ 
> 
> AUs are the only way I can actually manage to make this OT3 something that can actually happen without it being totally implausible, so yay!?

**I.**  
“No, no – no no,” Aramis keeps saying and she knows he’s telling himself he needs to focus, needs to steady his hands and _save him._ She can see that desperation in his eyes. But the wound is too deep and—

Porthos will die like this. Protecting her – when, in the end, she is the most capable of defense between the three of them. They do not know this, cannot know this. Of course not. They are doing their duty. Anne watches the way Aramis shivers, shudders – starts gasping out disbelieving words and shakes apart as if he is the one injured, as if he is the one delirious with pain. This will destroy him.

“You idiot,” Porthos grits out, staring at Aramis and then jerking his chin towards Anne. “You need to get her out of here.” 

Anne knows that no one of danger is anywhere close, right now – she can sense that much. But this place is not safe. Nor is it safe to move Porthos. He’s taken a bad blow to the head, a stab wound into his gut that will bleed out all the more if he is to move. Anne can see the way the light is starting to fade from his eyes. She knows the smell of death far too well. The smell of the blood does not disturb her as it once did when she was young, but it is still a struggle not to physically react to the smell. 

Aramis is stubborn, shaking his head, pressing his hands to Porthos’ chest. He chokes out, “Don’t – you _can’t_ leave me—”

“Get out of here,” Porthos orders, with more surety than Anne thinks he must be feeling – and her entire body shudders with that need to fly, that need to leave. But Porthos is a good man. She has not known him long, has gotten to know him specifically because he and Aramis are on her guard detail. Aramis, she knows well. Aramis, she—

“No,” Aramis says, softer this time, bows into Porthos, ducking his head. Stares at the blood on his hands in a vain attempt at stopping its flow. “No… I have to save you. I have to—”

“I’m fine,” Porthos says, a lie. Softer, “Neither of you have to die. Go. Save her.” 

“Stop telling me to go! Stop—” Aramis’ voice is wavering. He ducks his head, whispering out in a hushed, hurried prayer. “God. God, please save him. God—”

Anne bites at the inside of her cheek. Breathes in. Feels the extent of her power pulse up from its dormancy. Feels the glint in her eyes. Feels the slide of perfect ease in her limbs as she shifts, just the slightest bit closer. She reaches out, touches at Aramis’ shoulders – and he does not flinch away from her, seems to arch up into her touch. She kneels down, and the blood will stain her dress. 

“I can save him.” 

 

**II.**  
It is, in the end, an adjustment. Porthos is not ungrateful to be saved, but he is ambivalent about what he has become. He doesn’t have to speak it for Anne to understand it between the bond now created. Her blood is now his blood. He will follow her until the end of their days. He knows this. This is the rule of the pureblood and its created. 

Aramis cannot understand that much. All he knows is that his world has now changed. All he knows is that the woman he loves has saved the man he loves. That night where he almost died is almost a distant memory, even if it feels too recent – but it marks the day of his death and the day of his rebirth, in a way. Aramis still wakes up shuddering from bad dreams, clings to Anne and burrows into her – murmuring out her name in a desperate plea to hold onto her. Knowing her true nature now does not repulse him. If anything, it only reminds him of how much he loves her – how much he can put his trust into the unknown in the name of love. Despite the many years Porthos has spent berating him for his eccentricities, Porthos has always admired Aramis’ ability to love so freely and deeply. 

Porthos cannot be ungrateful. He does not understand this new surety that is now his reality. He does not know his strength, breaking things without thinking, breathing in too sharply because he does not remember how to breathe anymore. He’s broken more of Anne’s expensive gifts over the past month than he’s ever broken anything in his entire life, just because a simple brush of his elbow is enough to send it flying to the floor. 

Anne rests her hand over his, and the soft gesture feels too intimate but he cannot shrug it away. In a way, he craves it. Aramis asked him a few days after the transformation what it felt like – and Porthos still struggles to describe it. She is not his mother, she is not his sister, she is not his friend, or his lover, or his master. She is something that transcends all and yet explains nothing. 

All he knows is that he owes everything to her and he will serve her until his death. He understands the small lilt of her smile as she looks at him. He touches her hand, squeezes it, and does not fear being too bruising in his strength. He envies the way she carries herself, gentle and kind, how she can touch Aramis without bruising him – how she can move through her life as if it has not irrevocably changed forever. 

When Aramis kisses him in relief, touches his face as if he is still the human man he once was, he does not know how to tell him that he does not feel himself, that he does not feel concrete or sure in his own bones, in his own blood, in his own voice. He does not know how to tell him that when he cups Aramis’ hips, he isn’t sure if it is his own hands that touch him. When he studies the bruises afterwards – left there despite his attempts to be gentle – Aramis only seems pleased with the reminders, but Porthos can never quite banish the twist in his stomach. 

He does not need to voice these concerns to Anne – she looks at him in kindness, in understanding. But even she cannot fully know. She was born to this, not created. She does, however, understand better than anyone else would. She shows him, she teaches him, she guides him through the steps of this new life – and he feels like a newborn, unsure and unprotected, dependent. 

“Will you ever forgive me for this?” Aramis asks him. 

Porthos is not angry with him, not truly – perhaps the small threads of anger lingers, perhaps he does not know what he feels. He looks at Anne, who offers him the smallest smile. She moves, glides across the room, reaches out to take Aramis’ hands in his. He looks up from the floor to look at her, and Porthos looks away even as he feels the bloom of love that is not his own unfurling in his chest, a deep connection to everything Anne feels in tandem with his own. 

They are beautiful and they are kind – and he is devoted to both. For very different reasons, but with the same result: he would give everything in his power to protect them. He hears Aramis sigh out, hears the shift of fabric, the way Anne melts into his touch, the way his hands fan out over her back, draw her close. 

“Whatever I can do,” Aramis tells them both, looking between the two of them. “Whatever it is you need, I’ll give it to you.” 

 

**III.**  
Aramis watches them both moving in the moonlight. It’s appropriate, that it should be a night like this. He first met her in moonlight, deep in the palace gardens – before he knew who she was, before he knew how deeply he would fall. And she first saved Porthos in moonlight, while Aramis was desperate, sobbing for relief. He’d never seen anyone more beautiful. Now, he knows she’s never been more beautiful to him than when she looks at him in this hunger. 

It’s something to regard, the way Anne moves slowly, considering, perfectly at ease in her own strength. Porthos moves more like he isn’t sure where to set his feet, still learning to move in the world around him, still learning the extent of his abilities. They’re both watching him and Aramis doesn’t think he’ll ever be used to the way the light glints off their eyes. It isn’t a noticeable difference, and maybe he’s eager to see it – but they always seem to flicker, liquid gold and silver. 

She comes to him first. He holds out his hand to her, and marvels at how their fingers lace together – the way she smiles, her cheeks dimpling as she moves into his space. He tilts his head to look at her, finds her looking up at him through her lashes, smiling, a hand pressing to his chest – feeling the steady beat of his heart, smiling more at the way his heart speeds up. Not from fear, never from fear. 

She turns her head, seems to speak to him in a way that Aramis doesn’t quite understand – can never understand what he’s invited, what he’s demanded, in asking her to save him. But Aramis watches as he nods, steps closer, moves in a slow arc around the two of them. Aramis watches him for a moment before he feels her feather-light touch upon his cheek. He turns towards her – smiles, warm and gentled, in love and knowing that he’ll never stop. 

“Whatever you want,” he whispers, before she can ask, before she can doubt. His hand touches her hip, draws her closer. “I’ll give you whatever you want.” 

She smiles at him, not looking happy, necessarily – but accepting. He breathes out as her eyes glint in the darkness, as she steps in closer, the ghost of her breath against his neck. He breathes in deeply and tilts his head back, swallows down as her teeth touch at the curve of his skin. He feels his hands, suddenly, cupping his jaw, the back of his skull, tilting his head back properly for her – and Aramis closes his eyes, only feels peace at being held like this, pinned down by her, held in place by him. 

When she bites, it is bliss – the rush of blood, the tang of danger against his pulse. She moves gently, but with a surety. He shivers, bites back the involuntary sounds as she drinks from him. His eyes flicker open, find Porthos watching him. He can’t nod, doesn’t want to move and disturb her, but he can see the sharp light in Porthos’ eyes, as well. 

It is inevitable, the way Porthos considers him, too, hand upon his jaw, thumb pressed to his cheekbone. It is inevitable the way Anne pulls back, for just a moment, to consider – looks at Porthos as if she is granting permission, that same, intangible connection between them beyond Aramis’ comprehension. He lets himself feel jealous of that, even as he knows that he is selfish – that he is the creator of that connection in the first place. 

Porthos’ lips against the other side of his neck is a gentle drag, burning with the scruff of his beard, the hush of his breath. He is more considering than Anne not from compassion but from uncertainty, even now uncertain of the moves and steps he must take. Porthos does not understand the way Aramis hungers for the bruises, the bites and the aftermath. Does not understand how he longs for the viscera of their affection for him. When Porthos bites down, it is with less care and finesse not for lack of attempt on Porthos’ part, but because he does not have the ease of decades of practice as Anne does. All the same, Aramis has never felt more protected, more safe – has never felt more alive than when they are both drinking him down. 

His heart stutters in his chest and Anne drinks. Porthos hesitates, takes less than he must need – in consideration to him, in consideration to her. Aramis shudders, knows that they will know what this does to him, always know what this does to him. Porthos’ hand presses to the small of his back, to keep him steady. Anne’s hand touches at his chest, rests against his beating heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on my [tumblr](http://stardropdream.tumblr.com/), as always.


End file.
